The voice had been growing softer towards the end of this speech and now it faded away altogether. Jill looked behind her. To her astonishment she saw the cliff already more than a hundred yards behind her, and the Lion himself a speck of bright gold on the edge of it. She had been setting her teeth and clenching her fists for a terrible blast of lions breath; but the breath had really been so gentle that she had not even noticed the moment at which she left the earth. And now, there was nothing but air for thousands upon thousands of feet below her.
"Come here," said the Lion. And she had to. She was almost between its front paws now, looking straight into its face. But she couldnt stand that for long; she dropped her eyes.
thought Jill. Then she looked below her; but she was so high that she couldnt make out whether she was floating over land or sea, nor what speed she was going at.
Jill remembered very well that if there was no time to spare, that was her own fault. "If I hadnt made such a fool of myself, Scrubb and I would have been going together. And hed have heard all the instructions as well as me," she thought. So she did as she was told. It was very alarming walking back to the edge of the cliff, especially as the Lion did not walk with her but behind her - making no noise on his soft paws.
Jill tried, and didnt get them quite right. So the Lion corrected her, and made her repeat them again and again till she could say them perfectly. He was very patient over this, so that, when it was done, Jill plucked up courage to ask: "Please, how am I to get to Narnia?”
When she looked back now she could take in for the first time the real size of the mountain she was leaving. She wondered why a mountain so huge as that was not covered with snow and ice - "but I suppose all that sort of thing is different in this world,”
"He fell over the cliff," said Jill, and added, "Sir." She didnt know what else to call him, and it sounded cheek to call him nothing.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
"If I run away, itll be after me in a moment," thought Jill. "And if I go on, I shall run straight into its mouth." Anyway, she couldnt have moved if she had tried, and she couldnt take her eyes off it. How long this lasted, she could not be sure; it seemed like hours. And the thirst became so bad that she almost felt she would not mind being eaten by the lion if only she could be sure of getting a mouthful of water first.
"Im dying of thirst," said Jill.
But long before she had got anywhere near the edge, the voice behind her said, "Stand still. In a moment I will blow. But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters. And now, daughter of Eve, farewell -”
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
And we did, and then we found the door open. "You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion.
JILL IS GIVEN A TASK WITHOUT a glance at Jill the lion rose to its feet and gave one last blow. Then, as if satisfied with its work, it turned and stalked slowly away, back into the forest.
"I will tell you, Child," said the Lion. "These are the signs by which I will guide you in your quest. First; as soon as the Boy Eustace sets foot in Narnia, he will meet an old and dear friend. He must greet that friend at once; if he does, you will both have good help.
"That is a very good answer, Human Child. Do so no more. And now" (here for the first time the Lions face became a little less stern) "the boy is safe. I have blown him to Narnia. But your task will be the harder because of what you have done.”
"I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didnt say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
"Will you promise not to - do anything to me, if I do come?" said Jill.
"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
"I do wish wed never come to this dreadful place," said Jill. "I dont believe Scrubb knew any more about it than I do. Or if he did, he had no business to bring me here without warning me what it was like. Its not my fault he fell over that cliff. If hed left me alone we should both be all right." Then she remembered again the scream that Scrubb had given when he fell, and burst into tears.
This puzzled Jill very much. "Its mistaking me for someone else," she thought. She didnt dare to tell the Lion this, though she felt things would get into a dreadful muddle unless she did.
"Speak your thought, Human Child," said the Lion.
"I darent come and drink," said Jill.
"He was trying to stop me from falling, Sir.”
"I make no promise," said the Lion.
"I am. And now hear your task. Far from here in the land of Narnia there lives an aged king who is sad because he has no prince of his blood to be king after him. He has no heir because his only son was stolen from him many years ago, and no one in Narnia knows where that prince went or whether he is still alive. But he is. I lay on you this command, that you seek this lost prince until either you have found him and brought him to his fathers house, or else died in the attempt, or else gone back into your own world.”
waves and the crying of seagulls. And now, too, she smelled the smell of the sea. There was no mistake about her speed now. She saw two waves meet with a smack and a spout of foam go up between them; but she had hardly seen it before it was a hundred yards behind her. The land was getting nearer at a great pace. She could see mountains far inland, and other nearer mountains on her left. She could see bays and headlands, woods and fields, stretches of sandy beach. The sound of waves breaking on the shore was growing louder every second and drowning the other sea noises.
Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do. When Jill stopped, she found she was dreadfully thirsty. She had been lying face downward, and now she sat up. The birds had ceased singing and there was perfect silence except for one small, persistent sound, which seemed to come from a good distance away. She listened carefully, and felt almost sure it was the sound of running water.
"Please, what task, Sir?" said Jill.
"May I - could I - would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill.
"Human Child," said the Lion. "Where is the Boy?”
It lay with its head raised and its two fore-paws out in front of it, like the lions in Trafalgar Square. She knew at once that it had seen her, for its eyes looked straight into hers for a moment and then turned away - as if it knew her quite well and didnt think much of her.
"Well, I do declare," said Jill to herself some hours later, "Ive been asleep. Fancy sleeping on air. I wonder if anyones done it before. I dont suppose they have. Oh bother - Scrubb probably has! On this same journey, a little bit before me. Lets see what it looks like down below.”
"How, please?" said Jill.
Suddenly from her left (for the wind was in the south) a great white cloud came rushing towards her, this time on the same level as herself. And before she knew where she was,she had shot right into the middle of its cold, wet fogginess. That took her breath away, but she was in it only for a moment. She came out blinking in the sunlight and found her clothes wet. (She had on a blazer and sweater and shorts and stockings and pretty thick shoes; it had been a muddy sort of day in England.) She came out lower than she had gone in; and as soon as she did so she noticed something which, I suppose, she ought to have been expecting, but which came as a surprise and a shock. It was Noises. Up till then she had travelled in total silence. Now, for the first time, she heard the noise of
"Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion.
"It must be a dream, it must, it must," said Jill to herself. "Ill wake up in a moment." But it wasnt, and she didnt.
"The task for which I called you and him here out of your own world.”
Staring at the blue plain below her, she presently noticed that there were little dots of brighter, paler colour in it here and there. "Itsthe sea!" thought Jill. "I do believe those are islands." And so they were. She might have felt rather jealous if she had known that some of them were islands which Scrubb had seen from a ships deck and even landed on; but she didnt know this. Then, later on, she began to see that there were little wrinkles on the blue flatness: little wrinkles which must be quite big ocean waves if you were down among them. And now, all along the horizon there was a thick dark line which grew thicker and darker so quickly that you could see it growing. That was the first sign she had had of the great speed at which she was travelling. And she knew that the thickening line must be land.
What it looked like was an enormous, very dark blue plain. There were no hills to be seen; but there were biggish white things moving slowly across it. "Those must be clouds," she thought. "But far bigger than the ones we saw from the cliff. I suppose theyre bigger because theyre nearer. I must be getting lower. Bother this sun.”
As the Lion seemed to have finished, Jill thought she should say something. So she said, "Thank you very much. I see.”
with her mouth wide open. And she had a very good reason; just on this side of the stream lay the lion.
"By Jove! The signs!" said Jill suddenly. "Id better repeat them." She was in a panic for a second or two, but she found she could still say them all correctly. "So thats all right,”
"I was wondering - I mean - could there be some mistake? Because nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call to - to Somebody - it was a name I wouldnt know - and perhaps the Somebody would let us in.
by this, that he will be the first person you have met in your travels who will ask you to do something in my name, in the name of Aslan.”
"Then drink," said the Lion.
"Child," said Aslan, in a gentler voice than he had yet used, "perhaps you do not see quite as well as you think. But the first step is to remember. Repeat to me, in order, the four signs.”
"If youre thirsty, you may drink.”
The wood was so still that it was not difficult to decide where the sound was coming from. It grew clearer every moment and, sooner than she expected, she came to an open glade and saw the stream, bright as glass, running across the turf a stones throw away from her. But although the sight of the water made her feel ten times thirstier than before, she didnt rush forward and drink. She stood as still as if she had been turned into stone,
"How did he come to do that, Human Child?”
"I was showing off, Sir.”
"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion.
She felt frightened only for a second. For one thing, the world beneath her was so very far away that it seemed to have nothing to do with her. For another, floating on the breath of the Lion was so extremely comfortable. She found she could lie on her back or on her face and twist any way she pleased, just as you can in water (if youve learned to float really well). And because she was moving at the same pace as the breath, there was no wind, and the air seemed beautifully warm. It was not in the least like being in an aeroplane, because there was no noise and no vibration. If Jill had ever been in a balloon she might have thought it more like that; only better.
The first thing she thought was how very grubby and untidy and generally unimpressive he looked. And the second was "How wet I am!”
Come. Walk before me to the edge of the cliff.”
she said, and lay back on the air as if it was a sofa, with a sigh of contentment.
"There is no other stream," said the Lion.
They were the first words she had heard since Scrubb had spoken to her on the edge of the cliff. For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, "If you are thirsty, come and drink," and of course she remembered what Scrubb had said about animals talking in that other world, and realized that it was the lion speaking. Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time, and the voice was not like a mans. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.
It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion - no one who had seen his stern face could do that - and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didnt need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once. Before she tasted it she had been intending to make a dash away from the Lion the moment she had finished. Now, she realized that this would be on the whole the most dangerous thing of all. She got up and stood there with her lips still wet from drinking.
Suddenly the land opened right ahead of her. She was coming to the mouth of a river. She was very low now, only a few feet above the water. A wave-top came against her toe and a great splash of foam spurted up, drenching her nearly to the waist. Now she was losing speed. Instead of being carried up the river she was gliding in to the river bank on her left. There were so many things to notice that she could hardly take them all in; a smooth, green lawn, a ship so brightly coloured that it looked like an enormous piece of jewellery, towers and battlements, banners fluttering in the air, a crowd, gay clothes, armour, gold, swords, a sound of music. But this was all jumbled. The first thing that she knew clearly was that she had alighted and was standing under a thicket of trees close by the river side, and there, only a few feet away from her, was Scrubb.
"On my breath," said the Lion. "I will blow you into the west of the world as I blew Eustace.”
The sun which had been high overhead when she began her journey was now getting into her eyes. This meant that it was getting lower, ahead of her. Scrubb was quite right in saying that Jill (I dont know about girls in general) didnt think much about points of the compass. Otherwise she would have known, when the sun began getting in her eyes, that she was travelling pretty nearly due west.
"Then you are Somebody, Sir?" said Jill.
"Shall I catch him in time to tell him the first sign? But I suppose it wont matter. If he sees an old friend, hes sure to go and speak to him, isnt he?”
"Why were you so near the edge, Human Child?”
"You will have no time to spare," said the Lion. "That is why I must send you at once.
Second; you must journey out of Narnia to the north till you come to the ruined city of the ancient giants. Third; you shall find a writing on a stone in that ruined city, and you must do what the writing tells you. Fourth; you will know the lost prince (if you find him)
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
"Do you eat girls?" she said.
Jill got up and looked round her very carefully. There was no sign of the lion; but there were so many trees about that it might easily be quite close without her seeing it. For all she knew, there might be several lions. But her thirst was very bad now, and she plucked up her courage to go and look for that running water. She went on tiptoes, stealing cautiously from tree to tree, and stopping to peer round her at every step.
